Interlude
by mysticVigil
Summary: “This is reality, how he wants to love someone but doesn't know how.” What's It Feel Like To Be A Ghost? snippets between Craig's onstage nosebleed and the train station. Ellie centric musing. Implied, angsty Crellie.


Summary: "This is reality, how he wants to love someone but doesn't know how." What's It Feel Like to Be a Ghost? snippets between Craig's on-stage nosebleed and the train station. Ellie-centric musing; implied, angsty Crellie.

_Because we all feel like Ellie sometimes._

Also, concrit is welcomed with open arms. Like chocolate chip cookies.

--

"**Interlude"**

_All she could do was stand back with her hand over her mouth and watch the blood trickle down his chin. There were bodies pressed up against her, and it was hot, and her bangs were sticky and plastered against her forehead but all she could feel was her heart constrict in her chest. And she could hear the thump thumping and the blood rushing to her head; and she could taste his lips and they made her feel lightheaded with a cotton tongue. _

She felt faint. But she stood. She stood, and her eyes were fixed on the blood running down his pale chin and she knew her own sweaty bangs were that red against her forehead. We have something in common still_, she wanted to scream, but it felt like the volume was on mute and the only sound was the blood pounding in her ears and her heart._

Read my lips_, she willed._ We have something in common.

_But he stared at the wall behind her, and she knew he couldn't even hear the blood pounding because it was all over his lips and his fingertips._

_His eyes sought the wall and she thought, suddenly, maybe that was his reply. _Something in common? You and… us?_ Disjointed, fragmented, confused._

_Confused, she sat on the bar stool and weakly brushed the hair out of her eyes. _Yes, we have something.

--

He sits beside her. The night is warm but she keeps the windows rolled up. She's not sure what he'll do, but she doesn't rule out trying to wiggle through the window. He does, after all, have very slim hips.

A giggle escapes. Everything is bottled up, and she starts laughing with her eyes focused on the road and her fingers tight around the wheel. It's been a long night, and she needs a release.

"Elle?"

He looks at her suddenly. His curls are flat and he still looks distant, and she sees the red stoplight and the twinkle twinkle little stars reflected in his glassy eyes – and she sees herself too, when she glances over. Her pale skin, and the hair she spent an hour on just for him but now it's wild and frizzy and not beautiful: her pale skin and frizzy hair are reflected in his eyes and she tries to ignore them. And she falters.

"Don't jump out the window, okay? You have slim hips."

He smiles and she smiles and thinks, _What am I doing now?_ She feels his tentative fingers on her knee and pushes the gas when his teeth turn glittery green from the light suspended above them. Too fast.

--

_And Adam led him off the stage and she willed herself to follow._

_She couldn't breathe and her legs were rubber and her cheeks were on fire with the embarrassment that she thought he should have felt. But maybe he didn't feel anything, so she had to feel for him. _Because we have something in common?

_And the bartender asked if she wanted anything and she said, No, one of us has to be sober. Did she say that? Looking back, maybe it was just a thought too, too close to the tip of her tongue but not close enough to sound. That didn't make it any less real._

_It seemed like forever, the distance to the door backstage. It took all the energy she had saved for him behind the hand over her mouth and she stood with her head against the door listening, just listening, while bodies floated around her and wondered what they were paying for._

_She listened and thought that if she just heard him say her name, mention it in passing, everything would be all right. She could walk into the room and hold his head against her chest, fall asleep with him on the couch backstage and wake up in the morning to promise him that she would do something. Anything. For them._

_But all she heard was Adam saying over and over, _We all mess up, man.

_Still, she opened the door. Because he meant something._

--

He points to the right and says, "That way to Alberta," and smiles sleepily at her. Then there is the suggestive wiggle of eyebrows and, "We could go away for awhile."

She considers this. She considers turning the wheel and finding a cheap motel somewhere off the road. She considers lying beside him under stiff sheets and scratchy blankets and she considers his hands on her waist and waking up to meet the sprawling highway with a half tank of gas and a breakfast of chips and cola.

But then she catches sight of her wrist. "Craig," she says, and she feels his eyes on her. "Craig, touch my rubber band, okay?"

There are his fingers, soft and easy, and they send a chill up her arm, and she wakes up. She stops considering.

"Elle?"

She looks at him for a split second, and she sees in his eyes some half-hopeful, half-defeated reality. Reality, she thinks, is a pale musician with a drug problem and her own reflection and the scars on her arm and the way she needs him. This is reality, how he wants to love someone but doesn't know how. "This is reality."

Craig sinks back into his seat. Ellie sighs. As they go through an intersection she holds back tears and rehearses what to tell Joey.

--

_He didn't look up when she came in. Adam shared a glance with her and left the room and she stood there facing the one person who always made her move across the floor on jellylegs. His fingers were pale clay in his hair and his head was between his knees, and he didn't move when she sat beside him. She just sat, and he just sat; she tried to think of something to say._

_It was instinctual, the way she laced her fingers with his and tried to search for the commonalities: she tried to make sense of the interconnectedness, but he ruined it by curling into a ball on his side and laying his head in her lap. Still, she ran her fingers through his sweaty hair._

_And she started to ramble. She told stories he'd heard a million times before, and stories she tried to pretend never happened. She listed all the ways Manny was right, and all the ways Manny was wrong, and all the ways Manny didn't know how to love. She went on and on like breezes over waves and wheat fields, and still he lay motionless with his head in her lap._

_And when he finally sat upright he said, _Elle, I am so fucked up_, and kissed her easily with his eyes closed._

_But her eyes were open and she looked down. He hadn't even noticed his blood smeared on her skirt._

--

She unlocks the door and they sit in the car with the radio playing softly, a punkrock lullaby. She thinks he should get out and she should drive on to Sioux Falls or Seattle and never turn around.

But she settles for closing her eyes as he puts a hand on the nape of her neck; and he murmurs something about how he wishes he could be someone important to someone sometime.

She just says, "Yeah," and pretends he finally hears her.


End file.
